Euclid Avenue (Part 2) Friday May 27

So today I went back down Euclid Ave. a second time though instead of riding a bus through the Cleveland Clinic area en route from University Circle to Downtown, I got off down there and walked from basically one end of its campus to the other. However it wasn't so much the hospital that I was focused on: it was all the beautiful old stone churches that exist among the hospital buildings. All but a few are century or so old churches with high stone steeples and stain glass windows. Unfortunately, one of them recently burned down within the past couple years and now all that's left is a giant bell tower standing in a grassy field where the church once stood, except now there's a CVS placed next to it which I'm sure wasn't there before the fire.

The Cleveland Clinic, on the other hand, is - as we all know - HUGE. Building after building, block after block, yet there's nothing ugly or consuming about the system. It's a beautiful hospital and if Cleveland ever lost that hospital, we would be officially doomed. There would be this gapping hole down the avenue with hundreds of empty buildings and our economy would just about dwindle to nothing. Of course luckily, the chances of Cleveland Clinic leaving any time soon seem close to nothing based on the number of buildings they inhabit and the money that they've invested into the area. (Plus, they've got Cleveland in their name, so moving elsewhere really just doesn't make sense. Cleveland Clinic has got some nice alliteration going on.) Either way, the combination of all those lovely churches and the significance of the clinic makes this area of Cleveland both important and historical. Combined with all our other hospital systems, Cleveland will do just fine.